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How about some nichrome or kanthal coils wrapped around or under some kind of ceramic cup or stone machined into a cup? Take a look into e-cigarette atomizers and rebuildable atomizers for ideas. They make atomizers with kanthal wrapped around stainless steel mesh (search genesis atomizer) and the stainless mesh is scorched with a lighter in order to form a layer of carbon to insulate the kanthal from shorting against it.

I can't imagine a Cigarette lighter being stronger then the Soldering Iron...

My initial Plan was to use a lighter, but I find it much more intriguing to build something advanced! The Herbs are placed on a thin Ironplate so they dont get into direct contact with the Soldering Iron, Lighter or what I am going to use.

Would you suggest that I take take nichrome wire and place it under the Metal Plate?

You cannot let the nichrome wire touch metal, because this will cause an electrical short circuit; i.e. the current will find a less resistive path through the metal it is touching.

The usual trick for keeping the nichrome from shorting is some kind of electrical insulator that can withstand high temperatures. Things like fiberglass tubing, sheets of mica, or mica-like material, or ceramic or glass.

Also for heating elements, you cannot solder those connections that touch the element, assuming they might get hot enough to melt solder. So those connections must be crimped, or held in place by screws, or welded (much higher temperature), or something.

I don't know if you've ever taken apart a hair dryer, or toaster, but if you can find one at a thrift store for a few USD, inside you will find nichrome wire (of some unpredictable gauge AWG) plus some maybe some mica sheets, or whatever they're using for high-temp insulation. Usually the connections to the nichrome wire are made with rivets.

The riveted connections can't really reused, but sort of looking at it gives you some insight. I mean you see why they used rivets.

Also thanks for the link to fuckcombustion.com. It seems like if any place would have solutions to this kind of application, it would be their forums.

The reason I am asking about power, is because that is going to be the easiest way to approach something like this, for two reasons.

The first reason is there is an easy formula for predicting the power dissipated by an electric heater. You just model it as a resistor, and say P = V*I = V^2/R, where I am also assuming V, the voltage across this resistor is known and constant.

The second reason is that heat flow equations are complicated. Temperature distribution inside some oven-like box is hard to predict. It depends how fast heat is leaking out, through conduction, through radiation, through energy put into phase change, like vaporizing whatever you have put in the box.

Usually it is easier to just figure that out empirically with a heat source that you know is powerful enough. By the way this unit, the watt, is equal to one joule per second. It is basically a measure of how fast (how many joules per second) you are putting heat energy into the box.

For example I would guess that the flame from a butane lighter can deliver about 50 to 100 watts, and that number is based on these two links:

I was trying to find a quote for that RadioShack(r) battery powered soldering iron. The product page for it said, "This iron is equivalent to a 15 watt soldering iron.", and language like that usually means they're lying. I mean it's probably closer to 6 or 9 watts, and that's just guessing 6 volts across the heating element with 1 to 1.5 amperes flowing through it.

Sort of an immediate conclusion you can take away from this, is that battery powered heaters tend to be a lot less powerful than a lighter flame. Or I mean, you'll discover this when you actually start doing the calculations to find how long the batteries will last when being used to drive a portable heater.

Anyway, the final thing I wanted to write here, is an overview of how to design a heating element, assuming you a priori know P and V. You know how much power you want it to dissipate, and know the voltage across it. E.g. suppose you have a 6 volt power supply, and you want a heating element ( a resistor) that will dissipate 12 watts.

Next supposing you find some nichrome wire (maybe from an old toaster or hair dryer) with resistance per unit length 0.1 ohm/ cm. How long of a piece of this wire do you need to make a 3 ohm resistor? Answer 30 cm. Since (30 cm)*(0.1 ohm/ cm) = 3 ohm

I need it to be between 160-200 Celsius, and the volume is about the size of a glass, or 1½ -2 lightbulbs.. watt I am not sure, I do like that the portable heater of the link only uses 4 aa batteries and seems to create enough watt to power it